We talk about the importance of traveling physical distance, but how often do we consider traveling in other planes of existence? How often do we dare to wander the landscapes of foreign beliefs and values?
Waves, Not Lines, Are the Shape of Growth
We consider certainty and lifetime devotion to the same belief as a trait of strength. When someone remains loyal to a belief system or lifestyle for decades, we conclude it’s an indicator of them doing something right. It must mean they know who they are.
But isn’t a wave, instead of a straight line, a pattern of movement in the natural world?
Every Phase Has Its Own Truth
We refer to it as the cycle of life – a series of transitions and stages that each entity undergoes.
Each phase looks different and brings out a new expression in its carrier.
Each transition takes the subject closer to its maturity.
Yet, when change knocks on our door, we wonder what we did wrong.
If maturity isn’t a reflection of stagnancy, but cyclical change, why do we then force upon ourselves a life lived in a linear way? Why do we encourage a lack of experimentation?
The True Journey Isn’t About Seeing But Understanding
Traveling can be a brilliant way to open the aperture through which we observe the world. Still, how much of the physical world one has seen isn’t what defines one’s level of open-mindedness.
The level of comprehension that you possess for what you’ve seen or experienced is a measure of how much you’ve seen, how far you’ve travelled.
You can have years, titles, and miles under your feet, you can put every country’s flag in your travel portfolio, but you can still end up walking with a blindfold over your eyes – ignorant of what people say, mean, and need.
And more dangerously, ignorant of what you want and need.
Migration of the Mind, Not the Body
The idea of migration extends beyond the physical aspect.
The migration we should regularly do is to enter the land of foreign concepts, ideas, and beliefs. Not to bring imbalance into the order and system that runs our personal world, but to acquire new tools that will strengthen the bonds between the good parts we have, as well as demolish the old, and create new ones where necessary.
A regular practice of opening our ears and eyes to foreign concepts, beliefs, and ideas in order to test the relevance of the ones we carry and to root ourselves deeper in what feels right and true is the basis of expansion.
This kind of movement is the foundation upon which we build a world that enables us to remain as true as possible with the season of life we’re in.
It’s Not Change That Hurts — It’s Resistance
When we look more closely, isn’t the source of suffering not in the change that has come our way, but in our resistance to it?
Resistance is born out of fear. And those fears we face, they always end up being more dramatic in our heads than when standing in front of us.
Change is scary. Especially concerning some deeply rooted beliefs that have been the blueprint of how we lived for years. So we avoid it, because accepting one unwanted answer as such starts a chain of equally uncomfortable open-ended questions.
Change is always uncomfortable because it brings something new and unfamiliar into our lives. Even the most wonderful ones, like falling in love and starting a relationship, carry a certain dose of discomfort that comes with facing novelty and uncertainty of allowing another person so close into our world.
Growth Demands Humility, Not Certainty
If improvement means transforming what’s not relevant anymore into a more accurate version, then not possessing the ability to stand in those humbling realisations of being wrong is when we remove all opportunity for growth.
When a change of mind becomes the cardinal sin, we linger in beliefs, lifestyles, and philosophies that are long overdue to be left somewhere in our past.
We don’t tolerate a change of mind in others because we don’t allow them in ourselves. We can’t forgive others for their failures because we don’t know how to practice forgiveness towards ourselves.
The only option we leave ourselves with is – stay true to the principles you learned as a 9-year-old, stay committed to the person you were shaped into by others, way before you were even given the opportunity to consciously create yourself.
The cardinal sin isn’t to say something ‘wrong’, take a different course in life, and appear as a fool, but to let the fear of appearing as one stop you from discovering what your life is truly about.
What You Don’t Express Consumes You
It’s not the disapproval from someone in your life that’s going to keep you awake at night and turn your stomach – it’s going to bed every night knowing you’ve silenced your truth again, and trying to convince your betrayed inner self that it’s safe to wake up tomorrow again.
The fear of appearing ‘wrong’ is what we need to rise above. The potential consequence of alienation is nothing compared to being left at the mercy of the shame that you unconsciously sign up for when you obey such norms. The most destructive kind of alienation isn’t in relation to community, but being alienated from your true self.
Maintaining curiosity for the world we live in is the only way we can truly have a fulfilling and enriching experience.
Embracing failure and forgiveness is the path of growth.
Being okay with changing our minds should be seen as natural as breathing.
Because what we don’t express will end up eating us from the inside.
Fluidity of the mind, A Wanderer By Nature
We fear sounding wrong, appearing lost or confused, and we glorify shallow confidence.
It’s easy to be confident in doing what everyone else is doing and saying. It’s not easy to question your true needs and extract your genuine opinions.
We have mistaken certainty for self-awareness and blind confidence for groundedness. Being so sure of what you know and how you live, solely because you have never heard of anything different and never tried anything new.
A wanderer explores, samples, and creates a unique mixture of things that resonated with him the most. It’s not about the appearance of identity and where those samples came from. What matters the most is the resonance of truth within him.
It’s the fluidity of mind that dissolves the limits of what we think we are and can be.
It’s your inner wanderer that will take you to places where you meet your true self.
